We spent the day yesterday at a practice event in San Diego doing more
testing and learning.
At 08:54 AM 9/4/2004, Jay Mitchell wrote:
>One other item I forgot to ask about: you didn't mention any
>issues related to no LSD, and you said it's difficult to keep the
>engine in its powerband. That makes it appear that traction
>exiting corners is a nonissue. Is this the case?
I am finding I have traction issues from applying throttle. Perhaps because
of the lightness of the car and the power that is available and 225 series
tires. When the cam changeover happens in a corner, the back end wants to
come around. It almost seems that the best way to drive the car is in a
drift. Yikes.
As far as LSD, I still do not know. The does things different from my
experience with other cars. It is not getting what I think of in terms of
inside rear wheel spin on corner exit, but I can't put full throttle down
regardless because it induces oversteer. A bit of a puzzle. Perhaps a large
part of this is my inexperience driving a car that can spin the tires in
2nd gear.
> >The car may benefit from a stiffer front bar.
>
>If there are corner-exit traction issues, that would certainly
>help.
We think it may help in some other ways. But that remains to be seen.
> >I expect over the next 6 months we will be
> >researching these things.
>
>I'm pleasantly surprised by your results. I would bet money that
>the car will be classed in SS, if it's given a place to play in
>Stock. I was concerned that it might be uncompetitive there. Your
>experience so far would indicate that it has a fighting chance in
>SS, but that it won't be an obvious overdog. Hopefully, that also
>means that Stock Elises won't be banished to ASP.
Another data point... on a long course with some horsepower sections and
not much in slaloms... Robert did a 62.3 second run. Leslie Cohen in her
Z-06 was 61.5. I think CS cars were in the 64-65 second range. However most
of our runs were in the 63-64 second range, but I am sure both Robert and I
would agree we were not driving the car well and the car should be faster.
We are still experiencing a kinda violent reaction to overdriving it...
when you correct, it shoots over radically. My initial guess is that we are
hitting the bumpstops and that is making it act oddly. Perhaps more
compression on a set of adjustable shocks will solve that.
The most depressing part of the day was finding we had corded the front
205-16 Hoosiers. AFTER 20 RUNS! That is nuts. We tried running them with
higher pressures, but the car handled much worse when we did. Dropping the
fronts to 35psi seemed to help the handling, but the result was that the 04
Hoosiers corded on the outer corner. Perhaps some more negative camber
would help that, though I did not feel the car needed it. The car has ABS
and we did not lock up ever. The front does not understeer, so we were not
plowing. It's a midengined car that we were having oversteer issues with. I
have never seen a midengined car eat the fronts and the rears have a lot of
life. Odd.
Unfortunately, Kumhos does not have the 710s in the correct size for this
car, neither does Avon. But if we can only expect 20 runs (16 on relatively
easy-on-the-tread asphalt, than I don't see how we can do a ProSolo weekend
on one set.
Randy Chase
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